“If it is a resource and it has a value, then people should be paying something for the source of that resource.” Assemblyman John DiMaio

When the 10th anniversary of the Highlands Act was celebrated last week, we saw one proponent after another risking carpal tunnel syndrome through an exercise in mutual back-patting unprecedented in recent history.

What we didn’t see is the money.

Back in 2004, the bill’s sponsors promised that Highlands property owners would be compensated for lost land value. The bill’s prime backer, state Sen. Bob Smith, invoked a quote from the 1996 movie "Jerry Maguire" at a hearing:

"If there was one message tonight, it was the voice of Tom Cruise saying ‘Show Me the Money,’ " the Middlesex County Democrat said. "And Chairman John McKeon and I pledge that we will show you the money. We’re currently working with the governor’s office to put together the guaranteed and dedicated source of funds so that the Highlands, which is making the sacrifice for the rest of the state, is properly compensated. We will show you the money."

Highlands homeowners are still waiting. Among them is Deborah Post, the owner of a 68-acre farm in Chester Township that was valued at $200,000 an acre on the day Smith made that promise. Most of that value was wiped out because she lost her right to subdivide, but Post has yet to see a dime in compensation, she said.

"There was always an intent to railroad it through and then say they’d find the money later," said Post of the bill. "That was all one great big, fat lie."

Instead of finding a funding source, the bill’s backers spent those 10 years arguing that the landowners didn’t deserve compensation in the first place. Last week on these pages two officials with the Highlands Coalition penned a piece in which they stated, "There is nothing in the Highlands Act requiring compensation for its impact on property values."

Nonsense. There are plenty such passages. One cites "the need to provide just compensation to the owners of those lands when appropriate." Another calls for the state to develop a Transfer of Development Rights program that would compensate owners in the Preservation Zone through the sale of development rights in other areas.

That TDR program never got off the ground. The same was true of a plan to impose a water tax on the lowland areas using the water that flows from the Highlands to compensate the landowners.

The Highlands Act was sold as a water-conservation measure. But if that had truly been the case, then the Legislature should have enacted that tax, said Assemblyman John DiMaio.

"If it is a resource and it has a value, then people should be paying something for the source of that resource," said the Warren County Republican.

In reality the water-conservation angle was just a pretext for a land grab, said DiMaio. Under the guise of preserving water quality, Highlands rules set building lot sizes at 88 acres instead of the 10-acre and 15-acre zoning that many towns had imposed before the law. But water quality was already protected at those densities, he said.

"This nuttiness about how 88 acres can only support one house is outrageous," said DiMaio. "It’s just been totally skewed."

That’s because the real goal of the act was not to preserve water but to prevent sprawl. That’s nice, but in the other parts of New Jersey the public pays to purchase preservation easements or to purchase land outright. Those land owners have been shown the money. Highlands owners are still waiting.

Will they finally see the money in November? That’s another promise coming out of Trenton after the Legislature put on the ballot a constitutional amendment hiking the portion of the corporate tax dedicated to open-space preservation.

But Highlands residents are unlikely to see much of that money. The tax hike would generate only about $70 million in its first year, just a tiny fraction of the $6 billion in equity the landowners say they’ve lost. And that money would be spread among toxic cleanups, flood-plain buyouts, historic sites and other causes.

Meanwhile a key section of the Highlands Act that was included to protect landowners has expired. That language set compensation values at their 2004 level. Absent that, the owners would be compensated at current value. That value is much lower thanks to the Highlands Act.

So it doesn’t look like the Highlands owners will be shown the money any time soon. What they’ll see instead is the same hypocrisy they’ve been seeing for a decade.
AND SPEAKING OF HYPOCRISY, take a look at what the main sponsor of the Highlands Act in the Assembly did when it was his Shore property that the state went after. John McKeon refused to grant an easement that would permit the construction of badly needed dunes to protect the Shore from storms,